Pons asinorum – CIS edition

The scientific debate regarding global warming has been over for some time, and the Australian policy debate has moved beyond the point where delusional pseudoscience has any impact. What remains of the scientific debate is a screening device in which individuals and institutions identify themselves as so lacking in intelligence, judgement or honesty as to cast doubt on their contributions on any topic. As with Euclid’s fifth proposition failure on this test distinguishes the donkeys.

Beyond a relatively small concentration, the effect of additional carbon dioxide decreases logarithmically, almost to vanishing point.

As Wolfgang Pauli would have said, this is not even wrong, since “decreases logarithmically” is a contradiction in terms.

Maley identifies himself as a “former academic” and his CIS bio describes him as a former senior lecturer in Behavioural Science who has worked on family and social policy. It’s a safe bet that he wouldn’t know a logarithm if it bit him, and that the simple exercise in logarithmic differentiation required to convert the claim above into something that can be assessed and refuted (here’s a good post that covers several more of Maley’s talking points) would be utterly beyond him.

Clearly he’s scrambled together a bunch of nonsense from delusionist Internet sites, and published it along with his “research” on family issues. Since he invites us to treat the two as being equally credible, I’m happy to accept. And since the CIS invites us to treat Maley as a serious researcher, the same goes for them.

Since we’re on the CIS, a quick Google search finds Helen Hughes, in the course of defending detention camps for refugees, producing this gem:

If there is climate warming, in 50 years’ time, Northern India and Northern China will have such a favourable climate that their productivity will go up enormously and people may want to shift from Southern to Northern India and, particularly, from Southern to Northern China, where there is going to be an enormous shortage of labour, which is already emerging.

All ad hominem. Are we to believe that every comment you make is the position of your employer, or your financier? Surely not.

In what way is describing Maley as a former academic false? Furthermore, the CIS is nowhere mentioned in Maley’s piece. Are people not allowed to have views an opinions different from that of their employer? Do you?

the effect of additional carbon dioxide decreases logarithmically, almost to vanishing point

JQ Says:

As Wolfgang Pauli would have said, this is not even wrong, since â€œdecreases logarithmicallyâ€? is a contradiction in terms.

What Maley says is true if you parse it carefully, you know, the way Howard tried to avoid obvious outright lies.

If we say that the effect of carbon dioxide is proportional to the log of carbon dioxide concentration, then it’s trivially true that the effect each additional bit of carbon dioxide decreases.

If we increase the concentration from 10 to 11 (in whatever units), the effect goes from 2.3 to 2.4, a difference of 0.1. But if we increase from 1000 to 1001 the effect goes from 6.908 to 6.909, an increase of only 0.001. See, the the effect of additional carbon dioxide decreases logarithmically, almost to vanishing point. QED.

Sinclair, I’m not suggesting that Maley’s description is false, just that it’s totally irrelevant, since his academic career obviously didn’t equip to write on this topic. And the CIS has published enough on global warming to make its anti-science line clear.

SJ, you’re confusing the logarithmic function with its derivative – parsing doesn’t get around this.

JQ, this is one of the silliest things you have ever written. It seems you have turned into some sort of bigot and I once thought you were a fairly good economist, equipped to write on economic matters. Maley’s views are his own, surely, as yours are. And what does “the CIS has published enough on global warming to make its anti-science line clear” mean? Where? When? Galileo had better treatment than this drivel of yours insinuates. And Neil, academic freedom is only limited to people in publicly supported universities? If so, the whole concept as you describe it, is degraded. What a pathetic and dangerous debate.

Back in August I looked at everything that the CIS had published on global warming. Every single one of the items argued either that it wasn’t happening, we weren’t causing it, or we shouldn’t do anything about it. Here’s the list.

Talisker, Sinclair asked whether JQ’s views reflected his institution. It was in that context that I asked whether he had heard of academic freedom. Given the norms of academic freedom (inter alia) there is no presumption that an academic’s views reflect their institution.

But since you ask, academic freedom *is* is restricted to universities. See, it’s the word “academic” that is the clue here.

JQ I also agree that Maley’s piece is polemic drivel. And I also tire of politicised hacks from “institutes” like CIS wrapping themselves in a veneer of intellectual credibility when they are not (current) academics, write articles that are not peer reviewed, and frequently comment “expertly” outside their field of expertise, as in this case. My question is whether it is worth wasting time dealing with these people? They will never admit they are wrong. Its like getting a tobacco farmer to acknowledge that smoking is harmful. (I tried that once in Mareeba; the response was not reasoned debate.)

I have largely given up reading the Australian, and don’t miss it. Lets just stick to the debate on what to do about Climate Change, as in your other excellent pieces. Mr Maley’s implicit suggestion of doing nothing while referring it all to more scientific debate is obviously nonsense, that shouldn’t fool the average high school student.

Iâ€™m not confusing anything, nor excusing Maley. I was attempting to explain the â€œlogicâ€? that leads to Maleyâ€™s conclusion.

I understand what “logic” with the quotes means (i.e. irony) but as JQ implied, what Maley said is wrong. The logarithm function increases, not decreases, with argument. (BTW, he should have said, at least, that the effect of additional carbon dioxide decreases inversely. Hence the effect of 1 kg of CO2 added to an atmosphere containing 560ppm CO2 is only half the effect of 1 kg of CO2 added to an atmosphere containing 280ppm CO2. Heaven help us if the atmosphere gets to 560ppm CO2.)

Hmm, not being a mathematician I didnt have any problem with the phrase “decreases logarithmically” eg on the pH scale acidity decreases as activity of H increases as -log is part of the equation. Of course the rate of decrease is to the power of 10 which makes for a more not less unstable brew.

what a lovely way to put a smile on my face on a rainy morning! so much more convenient than watching neighbors squabble over a fence.

question: should the government do as little as possible, with a view to maintaining some economic advantage, or, should it actively ‘force’ transition to renewables, hoping to either profit from new technology, or to save the planet from venusification by action and example?

if you choose ‘little as possible’, relax.

if you choose ‘get cracking’, how to press a government that already looks like plan a.

The sophistry of the Maleys is interesting. And whether it is ‘intelligent design’ or AGW, it’s a little reassuring to note that their anti-science positions have to couched in scientific sounding terminology in the quest for credibility. An implicit admission of defeat.

I read the Foreword by Robert Carling, Senior Fellow, CIS, of the article you referenced. I found:

“As Humphreys points out, though, the purpose of a carbon tax should not be to raise additional tax revenue, nor even to reduce overall energy usage, but to use price signals to shift the composition of energy consumption in favour of ‘dirty’ rather than ‘clean’ forms.”

I see, relative prices should change to favour coal and oil but not wind and solar. Neat!!

The intent of a CO2e energy tax as outlined in the paper is to put a cost on emissions and thus favour energy sources (eg Wind, Solar, Geothermal, Gas etc) that either have no CO2e emissions or less CO2e emissions.

In a nut shell the paper outlines a no regret tax reform that shifts consumption away from “dirty” forms of energy (eg coal) towards clearner alternatives (gas, oil, solar etc). No regret in the sense that it is a good reform intitative even if AGW is completely wrong.

To be fair I think you should ignore the obvious typo and read the paper.

You do really wonder about the mental equilibrium of these people. It also shows how far the Australian has sunk, it seems to be festooned with loons, harpies, pseudo-intellectuals and ponces. I am never quite sure when I pick one up occasionally if it is really the Catholic Weekly or a cleverly constructed Media statement for the GOP.

I gave up buying it several years ago. Thanks to JQ for reminding me what a dreadful publication it remains and became. Rupert should in all honesty fire the Editor(s) they certainly can’t distinquish between reporting and embellished fantasy and they certainly have taken the entertainment value of media to a new level.

The scientific debate regarding global warming has been over for some time

I do not claim to be an habitue of the scientific community, but Chris O’Neill very kindly pointed out some said community sites for me, and I can assure you debates over climate change are heated and many.

And to link Helen Hughes’ eminently intuitively rational observation – while certainly contestable – about geographical variation on the earth, to a grotesque claim she is “defending authoritarian xenophobia” is not only a non sequitur, it is a cheap and nasty libel that Prof. Hughes does not deserve, and which you should be above!

As far as I know, the CIS hasn’t given a view on climate change and has generally stayed away from commenting on climate change.

It is absurd to suggest that an organisations endorses all the views of all of its contributors.

This blog post smells of bigotry.

The quote given by Ernestine is clearly a typo. The point of the carbon tax was to shift incentives so as to increase the speed of our transition to “cleaner” energy and away from “dirty” coal. This should have been relatively clear from the paper.

Whether or not Maley’s piece discredits the CIS, it certainly discredits The Australian. Presumably they published it under the guise of getting a diversity of opinion on what we should do about climate change. But the problem with the piece isn’t Maley’s opinions, risible a they are, it’s his supposed factual material, which has been pulled straight out of someone’s arse.

The Australian’s editors can of course publish whatever they like. But why do think it’s smart to turn a supposedly serious newspaper into a supermarket tabloid?

The logarithmic statement made by Barry is IMHO a rather mangled attempt at stating that log(C(t)) and (some appropriate measure of) temperature are linearly related. Barry misses the usual qualifications, such as ‘all other things held constant’, and ‘without consideration of feedbacks’, when referring to this relationship.
Even more importantly, when trying to assess economic costs of delayed action versus immediate actions, the reverse implication of this relation needs to be considered. If the CO2 concentration is really high, say due to more ‘business as usual’ for another 30 years or so, then we need to remove a large amount of CO2 from the atmosphere in order to achieve a small decrease in temperature – again with all the usual qualifications added. On the other hand, if we take strong action now, any improvement on CO2 levels will have a relatively larger impact on temperature than if we wait another 30 years or so.

Hmm, not being a mathematician I didnt have any problem with the phrase â€œdecreases logarithmicallyâ€? eg on the pH scale acidity decreases as activity of H increases as -log is part of the equation. Of course the rate of decrease is to the power of 10 which makes for a more not less unstable brew.

The problem with this is that if this is Maley’s intrepretation then he knows even less about climate change than what this post gives him credit for.

I suspect that it is simply a case of Maley not have the faintest clue about global warming and not have the sense to know this.

That is a tragically narrow view of a typo. You’re dismissing a body of work merely because a third party (that wrote an introduction to the work) got the polarity of one statement the wrong way around. And the context of the document makes it plain that it is nothing more than a grammatical mistake. It seems somewhat petty.

So far, you and Humphreys have ascribed first a ‘typo’ to Robert Carling’s forword to Humphrey’s CIS paper. Now you claim Carling has made a grammatical mistake. Robert Carling is a Senior Fellow, CIS. Maybe you and Humphreys first want to check with him.

If a paper free of apparent contradictions is produced, I might read it.

Typo/Grammatical mistake. Talk about splitting hairs. The statement is clearly wrong. I’ve agreed that it is wrong. Humphreys has agreed that it is wrong. However if it still causes such discontent then on reflection I don’t think I want you to discuss it with you because I’m sure it is not perfect. If agreeing that a singular statement in a body of work is wrong means any further consideration or discussion of that body of work ceases then I’d hate to think what might happen if you read it and then we were to encounter something we disagreed on.

Maley’s piece again illustrates what happens when you mix up your logic and assume a scientific argument is a political proposition. It rates as another piece of pseudo science masking a political polemic. Check out the page at Real Climate where they have a special page devoted to the standard denialist arguments, says it all.

Dunno what I was thinking here. x^(-1) is a function involving exponents, but it’s obviously not properly described as an exponential function.

I put it down to a brain fart.

Chris O’Neill is correct when he states that the proper description, given Maley’s assumption that the effect is proportional to the log of concentration, would have been that the increase in effect per unit of concentration is inversely proportional to total concentration.

I haven’t been up to anything lately, but what can I say? More or less nothing seems important. I can’t be bothered with anything these days, but shrug. Pfft. Today was a total loss. Not much on my mind to speak of.

Given the second sentence – “Every time you double CO2, you get another 4 Watts per square meter of radiative forcing” – it is obvious from the context that what was meant in the RC article was “There is no plateau at which additional CO2 stops being important.”

That is technically wrong (additional CO2 is impossible once you get to 100%), but, like Maley’s statement, it conveys the correct impression, so nothing to get excited about.

And more to the point, given that Maley’s misunderstanding about CO2 forcing is followed by a totally incorrect statement about the IPCC only being recently aware of the logarithmic relationship it should be obvious to any sensible person that Maley doesn’t have the faintest clue about even the basics of global warming.

Coming right back on point, a logarithmic relationship means that with a doubling of CO2 concentrations, the marginal impact of additional units CO2 would be half the original value. Since emissions have much grown dramatically, and will continue to do so under business as usual, there’s no reason to expect the rate of warming to slow at all, let alone “almost to vanishing point” in any relevant timeframe unless we act to constrain emissions.

As I said in the post, those making and defending this claim have either never learned how to differentiate a logarithmic function or have managed to forget.

Since emissions have much grown dramatically, and will continue to do so under business as usual, thereâ€™s no reason to expect the rate of warming to slow at all, let alone â€œalmost to vanishing pointâ€? in any relevant timeframe unless we act to constrain emissions.

I much don’t understand this.

If you’re making a statement about the Earth’s temperature lagging the CO2 rise due to hysteresis in the climate system, then there’s much debate about how big that time constant is, but it’s not that long (otherwise how can we even attribute the recent temperature rise to human-generated CO2).

Otherwise, if the Earth is close to equilibrium than it’s true that a new molecule of CO2 added today has logarithmically less influence than one added in 1870 (I know, I used the same broken language as Maley, but what’s the alternative? “inversely less influence”? Doesn’t parse for me.)

“The scientific debate regarding global warming has been over for some time, and the Australian policy debate has moved beyond the point where delusional pseudoscience has any impact. What remains of the scientific debate is a screening device in which individuals and institutions identify themselves as so lacking in intelligence, judgement or honesty as to cast doubt on their contributions on any topic.”

The silence is deafening isn’t it? But have no fear, our intrepid intellectual elites, those seekers of truth and scientific enquiry without fear or favour, are busy as I speak, organising their full page petitions in our national newspapers, to decry this jackboot of the new orthodoxy, crushing academic freedom. Have no fear mere mortals, that they will rally to the cause as they have done so bravely and forthrightly before.

if the Earth is close to equilibrium than itâ€™s true that a new molecule of CO2 added today has logarithmically less influence than one added in 1870

to which Chris O’Neil responded:

280/385=0.73 of the influence. Couldnâ€™t quite make out the logarithm function in that calculation.

Then allow me to explain it to you Chris. All other things being equal (which they are not, but since the global hysteria is almost universally focused on CO2, we can ignore those “other things” for the purpose of this explanation), doubling CO2 adds a constant K per square meter of radiative forcing.

This means the change in radiative forcing is given by

F – F0 = K ln C/C0

for some constant K and reference CO2 concentration C0. ln is natural log (easier to work with than log base 2, as we will see).

So, suppose we add a molecule of CO2 in 1870. Then C0 = 280 and C = 280 + e where e is a really small number (the concentration increase due to one additional CO2 molecule). So

F – F0 = K ln (280 + e)/280 = K ln (1 + e/280)

Now, e is really tiny so we can use the linear approximation to ln(1 + x), which is just x (this is why we used natural log). So

ΔF = Ke/280

Current CO2 is C0=385ppm, so if we add one molecule of CO2 today C = 385 + e and the change in radiative forcing due to the extra molecule is

F – F0 = K ln (385 + e)/385 = K ln (1 + e/385) = Ke/385

So the difference in forcing increase is (Ke/385) / (Ke/280) = 280/385 = 0.73. That is, the CO2 molecule added today contributes only 73% of the additional radiative forcing than did a new CO2 molecule in 1870. It is true that the final ratio contains no logarithm, but the only way you get that answer is because CO2′s influence on radiative forcing is a logarithmic function of its concentration.

The CSIRO, the Australian Research Council and Cooperative Research Centres now have to have their media releases cleared by the PM’s office to make sure they reflect the new Federal Government’s key messages.

The silence is indeed deafening, observa. Imagine how such a policy by the Howard government would have been received.

I particularly enjoyed this bit:

Mr Paterson says it is not an unusual move, and similar things happened under the previous government.

So why the new directive if the policy was already in place?

Labor never did shed their communist roots, did they? Unfortunately for them, they don’t control the internet, although they’ll no doubt try. Wait for the great firewall of Australia.

Presumably the lack of hysteria is due to the impeccable timing of slipping it in under the Chrissy radar. No doubt our intellectual elites will not be fooled by such covert sleaze and will be organising their usual protests and full page petitions,etc, just as soon as they’re back at their desks.

Or it may be mugwump, that quiet background gurgling sound now, is the jackboot of the new orthodoxy, thinly disguised as a Santa boot, ramming the sanctimonious prior utterings of the usual suspects, right back down their hypocritical throats. We’ll see from the response.

I worked in both Goss administrations; the Borbridge administration and the first two Beattie administrations.

Every time there was an election – or even a reshuffle – there was a near-total revision of the government’s structural plan. Portfolios got shifted around willie-nillie. Departments got created, erged or absorbed.

Hell even if the same Minister got re-appointed he or she would have a new commission from the Governor which required the re-issue of a pile of formal orders and delegations because the old commission was no longer valid.

The one thing that remained constant was that ALL press releases from every Department and agency were vetted by the relevant Minister’s staff.

So you can either keep fantasising about being a lone freedom fighter struggling under the jackboot of Garrett’s Gestapo (if you swing that way) or you can accept that this busy as normal.

Oh and considering that the Howard government was supposedly (according ot the Murdoch media) forced to vet CSIRO press releases because of the radical green left propaganda constantly being spewed forthe by the crypt-Khmer Rouge Stalinist Gaaia-worshippers at CSIRO, you have to wonder why the current governemnt feels the need to do the same.

Is it that the CSIRO bods aren’t extreme ENOUGH or is this going to be a repeat of the “Rudd hasn’t even STARTED handing our the cyanide pills yet so he can’t be serious about global warming” nonsense?

“Oh and Observa have you ever worked in a government Department.”
Certainly did for a couple of years after finishing an Eco degree and so I agree with your summation. I don’t have a strong objection to new Govts introducing their particular company line or flavour, but we need to be careful about all singing from the same hymn book, particularly where science and research are involved. For mine that was the simple gist of Barry Maley’s message and those who were so critical of what they saw as some apparent Howardian jackboot, would do well to heed it. In their rush to be free from their Howardian chains, they need to be mindful of not simply becoming Rudd’s poodles. They have certainly been shown the leash and collar now.

Make all the excuses you like Ian Gould. They don’t change the hypocrisy. To quote the SMH:

Under the old regime no such restrictions were placed on statutory organisations. Media releases were always sent to the relevant minister as a courtesy but never for vetting or approval, unless the minister in person was directly quoted.

One former Liberal minister was taken aback when he heard of the directive. “They really are control freaks,” he said. He said it was not unusual in the past for the CSIRO, for example, to issue a release on climate change that “was contrary to our position â€¦ We just gritted out teeth and wore it.”

And neither do you properly. I suggest that you read Spencer Weart’s essays on the subject. It is not as obvious as this as the absorption of IR is dependent on pressure and water vapour content of the air.

You lot didn’t appreciate just how much of a greenie I am now did you? http://www.news.com.au/adelaidenow/story/0,22606,22978432-2682,00.html?from=public_rss
Now if Ruddy can turn us all into public servants, preferably all in the PSU so we can all award ourselves those nice healthy ACT salaries, then we’ll have our Kyoto target licked in no time by the looks of things and not have to worry about food and petrol prices or housing affordability to boot. These things are all so simple when you sit down cooperatively and work them through together.

A bit rich coming from the person who didnâ€™t realise that atmospheric carbon dioxide is a gas

What?

And neither do you properly. I suggest that you read Spencer Weartâ€™s essays on the subject. It is not as obvious as this as the absorption of IR is dependent on pressure and water vapour content of the air.

Gee Ender, maybe that’s why I prefaced my calculation with “All other things being equal (which they are not, but since the global hysteria is almost universally focused on CO2, we can ignore those â€œother thingsâ€? for the purpose of this explanation)”.

I find it interesting how greenies assume everyone else is at their IQ level.

If we’re discussing what happens at 100% CO2 saturation, then you also have to consider extra leakage/ionization to space at higher pressures (or, equivalently, thicker atmosphere), and greater natural sequestration rates.

A Solar Grand Plan
By 2050 solar power could end U.S. dependence on foreign oil and slash greenhouse gas emissions

* A massive switch from coal, oil, natural gas and nuclear power plants to solar power plants could supply 69 percent of the U.S.â€™s electricity and 35 percent of its total energy by 2050.
* A vast area of photovoltaic cells would have to be erected in the Southwest. Excess daytime energy would be stored as compressed air in underground caverns to be tapped during nighttime hours.
* Large solar concentrator power plants would be built as well.
* A new direct-current power transmission backbone would deliver solar electricity across the country.
* But $420 billion in subsidies from 2011 to 2050 would be required to fund the infrastructure and make it cost-competitive.

Let’s talk about that other big fly in the ointment too. If we assume for one moment that the CFC air conditioned 10,000 at Bali had succeeded completely in turning the world into Al Gore disciples, the question for Australia is then how best to achieve our side of the bargain, assuming itâ€™s that agreed nirvana of 60% reductions by 2050. MRETs and direct quantity controls aside for one moment, the broad brush solution (impetus) largely comes down to a choice between cap and trade, or a straight out carbon tax. In fact Kyoto signatories to date have largely relied on C&T and Australians are being cajoled into doing the same. Which should we choose?

The carbon tax is easy. Do you fancy a new constitutional marketplace, where all taxation is based on carbon taxing? No more GST, payroll tax, stamp duties, income tax, etc, just pay as you emit(or more administratively sensibly as you extract at the mine or well head). That level of carbon taxing (ie the level needed to pay for all current govt expenditure purposes) is the maximum theoretical carbon tax we could pay. It can be easily quantified and the relative prices of such things as electricity and petrol calculated in the new constitutional marketplace it produces. In fact we should have done the sums by now, or certainly must for the Garnaut report. Well hang on a minute O meboy, thatâ€™s all a bit radical. We might be paying $5,6,7/litre for petrol and paying our electricity bills weekly like GST or PAYG tax and they could be pretty ugly, albeit weâ€™d have our gross pay in our hands and prices of goods and services(not food) drop by one eleventh to compensate somewhat.

So you think thatâ€™s all a bit drastic do you? Well if you do, you might have to consider that the alternative proposal of C&T might see you paying all of that to the new lucky corporate entities awarded the emission rights, plus the level of current taxation you already pay. The C&T fans canâ€™t tell you what level of tax (actually economic rent) youâ€™ll be paying to the China Investment Corps, or Macquarie Banks or whoever owns the emission rights in future. That’s because they donâ€™t know what the theoretical maximum carbon price will be, when those caps are only 40% of what they are today. Theyâ€™re really in blue sky country here, unlike any maximum theoretical carbon tax that you could pay to govt for the communal goodies youâ€™ve come to expect. As such C&T is a potentially huge, unknown price gamble and should be rejected outright in preference to a finite carbon tax in the right hands. We should not give away the right to blue sky taxation to anyone other than our governments over whom we have democratic control. C&T is asking us to do just that and as such should be flatly rejected.

As an aside here I should qualify the definition of C&T weâ€™re talking about. Itâ€™s the giving away, or one off auction of emission caps to large emitters(although the latter will be a defacto carbon tax immediately). There is another way of overcoming that shortcoming (largely the information gap for players) and that is to have annual licensing of a reducing cap, which really becomes a tax anyway. Itâ€™s possible for the govt to issue a right to emit 1 tonne of CO2 pa, reducing by 2% pa over 30 years, which is tradeable between holders, but has an annual license fee attached, whereby the ownership effectively remains in communal hands. However itâ€™s easy to see how this effectively becomes a carbon tax with an upper limit of the total need to fund the desired level of govt expenditure. It simply leads you back full circle to carbon taxing in the first place, presumably with offsetting tax cuts elsewhere

If weâ€™re discussing what happens at 100% CO2 saturation, then you also have to consider extra leakage/ionization to space at higher pressures (or, equivalently, thicker atmosphere), and greater natural sequestration rates.

Nice try at weaseling out of your error.

You do realise that your reasons are reasons why 100% CO2 saturation won’t be possible, not why real climate is wrong.

I’m also guessing that you don’t realise that if you increase the pressure to the point where the change in leakage to space becomes important, then band broadening will increase the effect of CO2.

No weasel or error here, Kenny. Realclimate stated that the radiative forcing increases by 4W per square meter for each doubling of CO2. That’s obviously wrong once you get enough CO2 in the atmosphere.

It also doesn’t matter that their statement is wrong, because for all practical situations they are correct, just as Maley’s explanation is good enough for practical purposes.

For people who understand what a log is, Maley’s statement is mathematical gibberish. For people who don’t understand what a log is, it’s gibberish. Given that his next statement about the IPCC not realising this is completely false, the most charitably thing is to assume that Maley simply has no clue about what he is talking about.

So the derivative of the logarithm function is the inverse function. I would never have known if mugwump hadn’t shown it. I still can’t see the logarithm function in 1/x. Maybe I should say that the linear function is actually quadratic. mugwump might even bless us with a lesson that the derivative of the quadratic is linear.